FDR, New Deals, and the Limits of Power 225Americans, from FDR to the common man and woman, understood that the
disaster was indeed a manmade calamity [unlike the frequent denials of glob-
al warming in the 21st Century]. For the federal government, the massive
amounts of dust killing agribusiness was specifically troubling because it
ruined crop production and thus made the economy even worse. Thus, polit-
ical leaders had to figure out a way to provide federal disaster relief to the
farmers of the Midwest Empire and restore agribusiness.
As farmers inhaled the dry earth and coughed up wads of dusty mucous,
they knew they were in a new world; that the old quiet times of self-sustain-
ing toil in the countryside were gone [that, after all, was the point of Populism
decades earlier]. The common farmer realized he was part of a much larger
system of Capitalism, and that this more complex agribusiness required more
complex leadership and support from the nation’s capital. So he looked to
Roosevelt for a solution to the dilemma facing all farmers such as him in the
Midwest Empire.^ The Dust Bowl happened at a pivotal moment of govern-
ment expansion and activity to deal with the Great Depression—more
bureaus, more departments, more committees and offices to organize and dis-
perse relief. Roosevelt and Congress made the government grow throughout
the Depression decade with the creation of at least 100 agencies. They were
not originally created to deal with natural disasters, but they nonetheless pro-
vided disaster relief to Dust Bowl farmers during the huge environmental
calamity. Existing New Deal programs—most notably the WPA and the
AAA—were used to provide disaster aid. The New Deal offered a way for
centralized disaster relief for the Dust Bowl to be brought into the growing
government involvement in the national economy during the Great Depression,
and to therefore save agricultural Capitalism.
Although the Dust Bowl lasted for an entire decade, the most intense
years were from 1934-1936. Over those three years, FDR gradually intensi-
fied the state’s reaction to the drought by providing disaster relief to land-
owning farmers, and the families left homeless and/or jobless by the dust
bowl. Roosevelt’s style of disaster relief was not to provide handouts to any-
one who stood in a line. Like Hoover, Roosevelt was adamant that there
would be no payouts to people who did no work. Instead, FDR used New
Deal programs such as the WPA and the AAA to provide disaster relief in
the drought states for only certain classes of people. His program centered
not on single tenant farmers, but rather land owners and their families. The